Mr Punch's Golf Stories -

Circa 1920 - The Educational Book Co. Ltd. by arrangement with The Proprietors of “Punch”., London

A fine copy in attractive recent binding, with numerous anecdotes and 136 illustrations.

There are few pastimes that provide their followers with more innocent merriment than is afforded by “the royal and ancient”.

It may be taken that there is no better way of reducing a man’s self-conceit than to place him on the teeing ground for the first time, present him with a driver and invite him to strike a little rubber-cored ball to a distance of 200 yards in a given direction.

Consequently we have here most excellent material for fun; and you may depend upon it MR. PUNCH has not had his eyes long shut to the humours of the links. More details

Gwynedd M. Hudson brings both the characters and the text to life, with twenty one full page colour illustrations and numerous additional illustrations and decorations throughout. More details

Price HK$ 4,800

1900 - G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York - First American Edition (First English Edition 1889)

A lovely set of the two volume American first edition, describing the remarkable journey through China in 1896-1897 by that intrepid lady traveller Isabella Bird, first female member of the Royal Geographical Society and doyenne of all women travel writers. A a far handsomer edition than the single volume published a year earlier in the London, with 116 illustrations and a folding colour map.

‘Many of the areas she explored and carefully described were almost unknown to European visitors and had not been mentioned in any earlier English publications. Based on journal letters and the diary written during her journey, and it is generously illustrated with photographs and Chinese drawings. Bishop's work was warmly received in England and praised especially for the information included on agriculture and industry. The Geographical Journal heralded the work as 'undoubtedly one of the most important contributions to English literature on that country'. It remains a key source for late nineteenth-century British perceptions of China.’ -– Cambridge University Press. More details

Price HK$ 8,000

Peking: a historical and intimate description of its chief places of interest -
Juliet Bredon

An exceptional copy of the revised and enlarged edition of this important early travel guide in the scarce and brightly illustrated dust jacket. Considered by foreigners as an essential guide at the time.

Profusely illustrated with seven folding maps and plans, including ‘Dr. Bretschneider's Map of Peking, showing Surroundings of the Capital’ to the rear, 29 black and white photographic plates mostly by A. J. Waller, and engravings in the text. More details

Price HK$ 3,500

An attractive early edition, with a preface and memoir of both sisters; the 1847 first edition of Wuthering Heights is virtually unobtainable to all but the most fortunate.

‘My greatest thought in living is Heathcliff. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be... Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure... but as my own being.’

Wuthering Heights is the only novel of Emily Brontë, who died a year after its publication, at the age of thirty. A brooding Yorkshire tale of a love that is stronger than death, it is also a fierce vision of metaphysical passion, in which heaven and hell, nature and society, are powerfully juxtaposed. Unique, mystical, with a timeless appeal, it has become a highlight of English literature. More details

Price HK$ 5,800

1915 - William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London - First Edition

Penned in the early months of the first world war, while Buchan was writing for the War Propaganda Bureau and as a correspondent for The Times in France. Described as ‘the perfect thriller’, The Thirty-Nine Steps introduced the world to spy-catcher Richard Hannay, who was based on a friend of Buchan’s from his days serving in South Africa - Edmund Ironside.

The Thirty-Nine Steps clearly struck deep chords with the reading public of a Europe riven by war, because it sold twenty-five thousand copies in less time than it takes to fill a pipe whilst on the run across the Scottish highlands pursued by dastardly agents of a foreign power. Richard Hannay was, quite simply, everything that Britons should be and a personification at the time of everything they very much needed to be.

The neat card signed by John Buchan is an added bonus included with this nice example of the first edition with little of the usual toning caused by the cheap paper stock. Housed in custom clamshell case, navy morocco leather over matching cloth, spine lettered in gilt, felt lined. More details

Price HK$ 13,000

1900 - Longmans, London - First Edition

Ever in search of adventure, Churchill in 1899 attached himself to the 21st Lancers and followed the flag to South Africa. There, a rebellion against British authority had broken out among the Boer settlers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, and a Boer Republic had been proclaimed.

Churchill secured an assignment as press correspondent to The Morning Post, but he had scarcely arrived before he was involved in a skirmish which found him "in durance vile": a prisoner of war in Pretoria, unable to talk himself out of prison by claiming to be a reporter, and nearly mad over the lack of action. Typically, he made a daring escape, travelling overland toward Lorenço Marques, Portuguese East Africa (now Maputo, Mozambique), hiding by day and moving by night. The true-life adventure story of his successful escapade dominates this book, one of the most gripping in the canon, making this one of his most popular works. - Richard Langworth.

Churchill’s escape made him a minor national hero for a time in Britain, though instead of returning home, he rejoined General Buller's army on its march to relieve the British at the Siege of Ladysmith and take Pretoria. He was one of the first British troops through, and in fact, alongside his cousin the Duke of Marlborough, was able to get ahead on horseback to demand and receive the surrender of 52 Boer guards from the prison camp More details

Price HK$ 6,800

1932 - Thornton Butterworth Limited, London - First Edition

A handsome copy in a striking recent leather binding. Churchill's second and final autobiographical book (following 'My Early Life').

Churchill begins by asking what it would be like to live your life over again and ends by describing his love affair with painting. In between, he touches on subjects as diverse as spies, cartoons, submarines, elections, flying, and the future.

Containing twenty three articles, including ‘My Spy Story’, ‘Mass Effects of Modern Life’ and ‘Moses’, originally dictated late at night in the 1920s in his study, all of which had been published in magazines and newspapers between 1921 and 1931. Illustrated with photographic frontispiece and several cartoons. More details